General Guide About Choosing a graphic card to Your PC
VGA card or a graphic card have used to display an image or to process video on computer. Along with the development of technology, the function of graphic card grown to include several additional functions, such display 3D images or animation and video decoding while you watch the video.
Some factors that determine the performance of a graphic card is approximately equal to a processor ( clock, bandwidth, and architecture). The main difference between them lies in the load rendering and architectural design. The workload of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) has been very parallel, so a graphic card have simpler design than processor.
There are two types of graphic cards used today, the AGP and PCI express, and the difference is in the slot that used on the motherboard. I recommend to use PCI exprees slot because it has more greatness than AGP.
Selecting Graphic Card
Two major companies in a graphic card industry are NVidia and ATI. ( Intel and SIS has great VGA card too today). They have own technology to their graphics card. Usually people buy an additional graphics card for gaming or graphics and multimedia purposes.
We can divide graphics cards to 3 class, base on the price and the performance.
- Low end Graphic cards ( US$ 30 – 100)
- Mid end Graphic cards ( US$ 100 – 250)
- High end Graphic cards (US$ 250 above)
Before you buy a graphic card, you have to see a graphic card port on your main board. Is it an AGP or PCI-Express port? AGP port is used in older PC and PCI-Express is for newer one.
If we talk about a graphic card or VGA card, people are usually based on the capacity of RAM that is owned by the graphics card. Assuming that the greater the capacity of video card RAM, so then the effect on the resulting picture quality will be better anyway. Basically, the existing RAM in the graphics card is used to treat a variety of texture formats and resolutions that will be displayed on the display until it reaches an optimal point. Theoretically, it makes sense if you use a graphics card with 1 GB of RAM to play games like Crysis, Far Cry 2 or Modern of Warfare, because all those games require high textures format and high resolution.
Actually, there are factors that RAM on a graphic card is not a major benchmark. There are still several other critical components that must be considered.
1. Type of chipset used by a graphic card
2. How many capacities clock speed of a graphic card chipset
3. RAMDAC (Random Access Memory Digital-to-Analog Converter)
It could be possible that if you have a graphic card with 512 MB of RAM only but it has higher chipset,clock speed and higher RAMDAC, will have greater performance than the graphics card that has a capacity of 1 GB of RAM.
Therefore, I will give useful tips when you are going to buy a graphic card:
If it is used for running standard applications, use only the standard graphic cards. And if it will be used to play games with high-resolution level or running graphics applications by video processing or rendering, select a graphics card with a higher specification as well.
Also do not be swayed on frills ”LE” or ”SE”, because those types are not better than the standard version.
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Category: hardware
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Thanks for sharing nice guidance for choosing graphic card. It is best info for me. I am very happy to read this article. Thanks for giving us nice info.
I read your article. It is a great guiding for choosing graphic card. Such a VGA card is one of the most important part of a personal computer. I am very much interested in the topic. Thanks for giving us nice info.
Which is better AGP or PCI. I’m a bit confused what to choose. My friend told me that more advanced VGAs go with PCI. Is that true? Thanks.
@Reika
AGP port is old fashioned now. Many manufacturers don’t produce it anymore. You should choose a graphic card with PCI port.
These are very valid points, but it comes down to cost/performance.
I prefer nvidia myself they really provide good support and so far I’ve never had a problem I need to upgrade to a x480 soon enough for when newer games come out
I want to purchase graphics card of Radeon 1024MB, GDDR5 DX11. Does anyone know the approximate cost of this?
VGA card is one of the most important part of a personal computer. You should buy this thing so that you can view videos and install games for your computer but there are things you should consider before buying this. You should first check the memory and the motherboard for compatibility.
Sometime we have some compatibility problem with a newer graphic cards. I have some experience in it. First thing, look at the motherboard features. If we already buy new graphic card and found some compatibility problem, i suggest to exchange it with new one. Of course, we have to good relation with the store.
this needs some futher information about the spec of the machine. Lots of factors come into play when trying to establish good graphics performance on a PC. Memory, CPU.. chipset etc all count.
In all, not bad though.
I’ve been searching for useful tips in buying a graphic card and I’m lucky that I came across to your site. I have a problem with my computer because it’s already full of games and it usually hangs and then the graphic interface is not good.
This website and article is perfect. But, your website a bit slowly. I hope you resolve this error as soon as possible.
my disk to bad sector uhuuu
I want to buy purchase graphic card for my pc and i read your post. Such a best info for me.
jalebe merci az poste khobeton
thank you. that’s amazziiiiiiiiiiiing.
thank you for the gooooood articles.
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آموزش زبان,آموزش انگلیسیوزبان انگلیسی
@Navid
I don’t know what you are talking about here.
Anyway, thanks for your comment.
Please, write down the address of sites in the space provided.
This time I give an exception. but at other times all the links to my comment will be deleted.
Even though I’d like to think I’m pretty savvy with the internet and things of that nature, the actual inner mechanics of any computer is like another language to me… That’s why I like this post, because it makes things a lot easier to understand! Thanks for that, really helpful
Natasha
I showed this post to my fiance who is really techie and he was so glad to check on this because he has a plan to buy a graphic card for his pc at his apartment. Great post! Thanks a lot!
High end graphic card would be reasonable for designers, working with 3d modeling etc. For general users mid end graphic card will be enough.
Ohh, that looks I am using mid range graphics card (AMD radeon HD5770)
Very nice information about the hard ware and this is very good informative blog thanks for this post
Hey I’ve been searching for useful tips in buying a graphic card and I’m lucky that I came across to your site. I have a problem with my computer because it’s already full of games and it usually hangs and then the graphic interface is not good. What are other factors or things to consider in choosing a graphic card for games.
@Digital Printing
I don’t have any suggestion to you right now, because of lack of information about your PC specs. Mainly, if you use your PC almost for Gaming performance, beside graphic card there are a lot of thing to be considered. Motherboard, processor, RAM , Hard disk drive is important too, try to choose for gaming performance peripherals and not just a value peripherals. Beside, you have to take attention on PSU and casing ventilation.
These are very valid points, but it comes down to cost/performance for me, whats the best bang for my buck, without spending $400 on a new card